Field Blog

Elliott’s Home is Complete

Posted on by Jeff

Elliott Moses lived in a leaking, one-room shack that he built himself. Having grown up in Safford, Arizona, in a loving foster family, Elliott returned to the San Carlos Apache Reservation ten years ago to re-unite with his extended family. His new two-bedroom, one-bath home was completed on April 23, the first Panel W style home which Amor has completed. He can now comfortably live in a cool, clean, dry home. He has even begun painting the interior! He would like to give this message to all of the groups that helped make this dream come true: “Thank you for coming to help build my home”! Elliott would also like to add that he loves visitors and invites anyone to return to say hello.

Amor would like to thank all of the groups that have come to serve the Apaches in San Carlos, Arizona, with a special thanks to those that worked on Elliott’s home. 14 different churches have given their sweat to make Elliott’s dream a reality.

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Celebration Day

Posted on by Jeff

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One of our Core Values in Celebration. We had a great spring and it was time to celebrate all that God had done. We spent half of the day in strategic planning for the remainder of the year and the other half, well, having a blast.

Portina’s house is done!

Posted on by Jeff

Portina Henry was the mother one of the families on the San Carlos Apache Reservation who was in need of adequate housing. Her family had been living in a leaky one room shack for many years. She did not have access to running water or electricity, a neighbor allowed them to run an extension cord from their property in order to have a light. To stay warm, she lined the walls of the room with carpet remnants for insulation.

On March 19, 2013, Portina’s new home was completed! She and her family now live together in a clean, dry, insulated two-bedroom home where they can grow and thrive together. Thank you to those who have disrupted their lives to come and work alongside Portina and her family, providing a brighter future!

Check out here new house. Its beautiful!

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Stand and Be Counted

Posted on by Gayla Cooper Congdon

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When I was in college one of the stories we would hear was how Christians were putting themselves on the line during the Cold War in what was known at the time as the Soviet Union.

I can remember how much I was in awe of those that would break the law just so they could study the Bible. The story I remember the most was the one where a group of Christians were huddling together in a room reading the Bible by candlelight. Bursting through the door was a group of soldiers that held guns to their heads asking who in the group was willing to die for their faith.

Out of the group pretty much everyone left except for a couple of people that were willing to stand up and be counted for their faith. The soldiers let the others go – well I mean flee the scene – because they just couldn’t take that final step and die for their faith.

As the story goes the soldiers put down their guns as soon as they left and said to the couple of people that remained, “Okay now we have gotten rid of the imposters, let’s get down and study the Bible together.”

Did that story actually happen? I did not hear this story firsthand but I did hear this one or ones like it on several occasions and I can imagine that something like that has happened in places where people are persecuted for their faith.

Two stand up guys in the Bible were Joshua and Caleb. Their story, recorded in Numbers 13, is about how God sent twelve men to spy on Canaan and as the children’s song goes, “ten were bad and two were good!”

“God told Moses to send men to spy out the land of Canaan. He told him to send a man from each tribe. Twelve men were sent. They were to find out about the land and the people in the land. Moses said to find out if the people were strong or weak. Did they live in cities or in camps? He wanted to know what the fruit of the land was like and if they had forests or not. He asked them to bring back some of the fruit that was ripe.

The men went into the land and found that it really was a good land. The grapes were so big that it took two men to carry a cluster of them on a pole between them. But the people there were very big and tall, and the spies were afraid of them. They were gone for 40 days.

When they returned to their own camp, they showed Moses the good fruit they had found in the land. Ten of the men began to tell about the giants and how fearful they were. They told of large cities with high walls around them. ‘We cannot go into this land,’ they said. ‘We were just like grasshoppers in our own sight, and also in the sight of the people there.’

Two men; Caleb and Joshua said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are able to overcome it.’

The Israelites didn’t want to go and take Canaan as God had wanted. God punished them by making them wander in the desert for 40 years. They had to wander around one year for every day the spies had been gone.

Of the twelve men that went to spy on Canaan only Joshua and Caleb were allowed to lead the Israelites into Canaan, the Promised Land.” source

There are countless stories throughout history where courageous people have stood up for what they believed in and changed the course of history. Or in the case of Rosa Parks who didn’t physically stand up but stayed seated on the bus on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.

When asked by the bus driver to give up her seat in the colored section to a white person because the white section was filled, Rosa Parks refused. And history was made.

I would recommend reading the recently released book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis – an inspiring account of Mrs. Parks sixty years of activism and the impact she had on the civil rights movement in the United States.

Pastor Gabriel from last month’s eNews stood up against a group of Neo Nazis and was counted in Delmas, South Africa by putting his life on the line. Corrie ten Boom, who along with her family, hid Jews in their home during the holocaust – which ultimately led to their death while Corrie survived and had the opportunity to tell the story of her family standing up and being counted.

Standing up and being counted doesn’t always lead to losing one’s life and yet it does come with a cost. Like with our own LaDonna Barron. Last year in South Africa we heard Amor’s friend and partner, Carolyn Kitto, talk about STOP THE TRAFFIK, a worldwide organization that is committed to eradicating child labor especially in the chocolate industry

Much of the world’s chocolate is being cultivated by little children using machetes so we can have that wonderful taste of chocolate in our mouths. Our pleasure in eating chocolate is coming at the expense of children’s lives.

LaDonna loves chocolate but decided on that day in South Africa she was no longer going to eat it. Even more than that she committed to educating people about this issue. But she hasn’t stopped there. LaDonna is on a campaign to make the Amor Store traffic free.

This year we are working to only have chocolate that is from companies that have a plan in place to become traffic free. And LaDonna would love to tell you all about it! She is standing up and being counted to protect the most vulnerable part of society – our children!

This spring thousands of people (many of them high schoolers) will serve in our three major locations because they want to stand up and be counted as they build alongside a family in order to keep that family together. And even though we may never know the cost or risk each participant will take to come and serve, I’m sure there is one!

Is there any place in your life where you need to stand up and be counted? What are you doing about it?

As we celebrate Easter and the real stand up and be counted guy, Jesus, let us remember that standing up and being counted comes with a cost or risk. Wouldn’t you like to ask Jesus what that was like?

What Are You Willing to Die For?

Posted on by Gayla Cooper Congdon

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In the book of Daniel we learn about the vision that King Nebuchadnezzar had for Babylon. He wanted a select group of young men to learn the language and literature of Babylon so they would be prepared to serve in the King’s palace.

Among those men of Judah were three men by the names of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They along with their friend Daniel became very well respected in the early part of their training because of their request to eat only vegetables and water instead of the rich food and wine from the King’s table. The result of a ten day trial of this food regimen was that they were better nourished and healthier than the others that partook of the royal food.

These three young Jews were themselves of royal or noble birth from the Kingdom of Judah and were known for their exclusive devotion to God. And as respected as they had become in the eyes of Nebuchadnezzar, these guys with the funny names got in some major trouble because they wouldn’t bow down to an idol the King had made.

To say King Neb was mad about this was an understatement. But he respected these guys and the work they were doing over the affairs of the province of Babylon. So he gave them another chance show their patriotism to him and Babylon, but as you can suspect they refused to bow down again.

They were actually quite bold in their response to him, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:16-18.

Wow! If they didn’t bow down they could lose their lives in a fiery furnace. The King was so mad that he was not only having them thrown in this furnace but he had instructed the pyromaniacs in his service to heat that furnace seven times hotter than usual.

So it begs the question, “What are you willing to die for?” These guys had a devotion to God that we don’t see too often today. They were willing to die for that devotion. And as I learned this past summer in South Africa, so was Pastor Gabriel – a member of our South Africa Ministry Planning Board.

Pastor Gabriel grew up in a Christian home with a dad that is a respected theologian among the Afrikaners of South Africa – a group descended from Dutch Calvinists and Germans. At eleven years old, Gabriel and his father had an exchange about apartheid that would set the course by how Gabriel would live his life.

Gabriel’s observation about apartheid was that he didn’t mind mixing with blacks but he felt they needed to understand their proper place and work under the whites. The wise theologian didn’t chastise Gabriel for what he had said but put this question to him, “What would Jesus think about what you just said?” And Gabriel became convicted by that question as he realized that Jesus would want people equal and not separate.

That exchange with his father at eleven set Gabriel on a path of activism in his country where he works diligently to create equality among all people of South Africa. He was an activist in University and even with apartheid dismantled in the 1990s, Gabriel continues to fight because racism in South Africa continues to linger on.

Just this past year, though, he found out that his bold stance on this might cost him and his family their lives. Gabriel serves a church in Delmas where we are committed to building in the black township of Botleng – outside of Johannesburg. A tragedy took place this past spring in a family that are members of his church. The gardener of this family who happened to be black murdered the nanny and the child of the family she cared for – who both happened to be white

The story was all over the news in South Africa causing the leading Neo Nazi group to descend on Delmas protesting these deaths. They were asking for an “eye for an eye” meaning that a black child should be sacrificed and die as well!

Gabriel was livid and began writing the papers telling the Neo Nazis that they weren’t welcome in Delmas to protest these tragedies. And he made it very clear that as unfortunate as these deaths were, they were the result of drugs and not an issue of race.

The Neo Nazis went so far to obtain Gabriel’s home phone number and called him one evening saying that they knew where he lived and that he had two lovely blonde children under the age of five. They suggested that one of his children could be the sacrifice instead.

Pastor Gabriel asked them to come to his church and discuss this with him. He hung up the phone that night with no assurances of what they were going to do. The next Sunday as he was preaching the Neo Nazi group entered the church and walked down the aisle toward him. As he shared with us, he felt that there was a good possibility that they had come to kill him in front of his congregation.

He kept preaching God’s word while looking their leader straight in the eye. And lo and behold the group sat down in a pew and Pastor Gabriel finished the service. Afterward they talked without coming to an agreement on the issue, but this intimidating group of Neo Nazis left Delmas alone after that day.

Wow! King Nebuchadnezzar put Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace only to see that their God had more power than he or his men had. And when Pastor Gabriel showed what he was willing to die for, a group of Neo Nazis in South Africa came face to face with the same God in the heart of Pastor Gabriel – and they too had to acknowledge that God had more power than they had!

During this Lenten season maybe we should be asking ourselves, “What am I willing to die for?” Jesus answered that question because of his love for us and for that we celebrate Easter!

P.S. Take a minute to check out our new video here!